A Boy Named Natasha
by LionessAmaya
Summary: The one where Natasha is a boy, and his life kind of sucks. Please read enclosed warnings!


_Warnings: Child abuse, alcoholism/ drug use, murder, good guys with questionable morality, prostitution, underage attempted rape, underage coerced sex, no explicit sex scenes but lots of implied sex, bad language, bullying, some misogynistic language/ attitudes_

_Contains: Male/male relationships, female/female relationships, female/male relationships, genderswapped!Natasha, genderswapped!Tony, not in the slightest bit comic compliant-ness_

_Heavily inspired by 'A Boy Named Sue' by Johnny Cash._

Natasha shows up to the first day of school alone, wearing wine-stained clothes and hunched shoulders. The other children are clinging to their parents; all around the room, tiny hands grasp neatly ironed shirts. Most are sniffling at the thought of being left alone in this classroom. He stays to the sidelines as much as he can. He already feels a certain disdain for this neat, colourful room, as well as the people in it.

"Well," the too-cheerful teacher declares, "let's all introduce ourselves before our parents leave! Everyone get into a circle."

Everyone scrambles to get into formation, the parents bored and the kids intimidated. He moves as unobtrusively as he knows how, settling down cross-legged on the soft carpet. Natasha is taller than most of his new classmates, and thinner than all of them. He observes with mild distaste as they announce themselves, some loudly and some barely a whisper. When the girl beside him has choked out a "Stacy" between sobs, he takes his cue.

"I'm Natasha Romanoff." Clear, calm, collected—everything he's learned won't set adults off.

The teacher doesn't seem to notice that the class is snickering. It seems this is the incident that breaks the blanket of silence and discomfort over most of the children. Here is something different, something to laugh at together and bond over.

"Natasha? That's a… very interesting name for a boy. Is there anything else you'd like to be called?"

He shakes his head.

"All right then, Natasha, where are your parents?"

Natasha stares at her until she looks down, uncomfortable, and moves on. For the rest of the day, the children form their little groups. They're too young to know not to stare at him, giggling. He picks up a few blocks, and starts to make a tower; he pretends that it's as tall as the clouds, and he can climb away, leaving all of them on the ground.

"C'mon, _Natasha,_ are you gonna hit me back? Or are you too much of a sissy?"

Thomas is in sixth grade, which seems to give him the ridiculous impression that Natasha is afraid of him. He has had years of dodging his mother's fists, and she has much better aim than the common schoolyard bully. Still, this is the second time this week Natasha's been cornered. He needs to get faster.

"I don't know Thomas, my mom always told me you shouldn't hit girls!" Billy says, voice ridiculously high-pitched. He laughs at his own joke for a few minutes, a little over-eager. He's Natasha's age, but skinny and awkward looking. He would be bullied relentlessly if he wasn't Thomas's tag-along.

Natasha learned a long time ago that the easiest way to get out of the situations is to take the hits silently until they get bored. There's no reason for this to be any different. People are jeering, his side aches from the one blow the older boy managed to land, and it's no different than usual. Except, his mom has finally broken the last dish in their house, and the bills are due, and the one picture in their living room is that of his stupid father even though he never did anything for them—

Thomas is on the ground, bleeding, before he's even made the decision to fight back. Billy is running, and the previously chanting crowd is… silent. Totally silent. They make a gap in the circle that had formed around the three boys, and Natasha walks calmly away. The sky is clear blue, and the only sound to be heard in the playground is that of Thomas whimpering.

From then on, the mutters take a different tone. "Stay away from him. There's something not quite right about that kid."

They don't talk about his name anymore, at least.

Missy is The New Kid. It's information so well-known that even Natasha is privy to it, and it serves as an explanation for why she's approaching him. No one has warned her yet; don't talk to Natasha the Nutcase, because he knows ten ways to kill you without breaking a sweat. Don't make fun of his name, or he'll hang you with your own intestines. Don't talk about his parents, unless you want to wake up missing an ear. He has a whole collection, you know.

"Hi!" The New Kid chirps, smiling. "Um, I'm Missy! It's nice to meet you."

She's blushing. Natasha can't help but notice, in a detached kind of way, that she's really pretty.

"Uh, this is kind of weird, but you're really cute!" A giggle. "Do you want to hang out sometime? What's your name?"

They've attracted a crowd, now, gaping onlookers awaiting blood. They're all trying to look like they're not paying attention, just hovering and tying shoelaces and 'subtly' elbowing each other while gesturing to the scene with their eyebrows.

"Natasha," he answers.

She stares at him, and laughs. "No way! Are you, like, a girl? 'Cause you look like a guy, no offense." She doesn't seem to be mocking him, really, not in the way he's used to. She just seem surprised. If he can just answer her…

He reaches for words, but can't find any. He stands there, still and silent, eyes on the ground. Finally, Stacy steps forward, and pulls Missy away. She's talking to her in a low tone, explaining that Natasha doesn't have a dad and everyone wonders about his mom, all of it a much more classier way of saying that he's around the bend. The crowd breaks up, all of them nervous and tense, waiting for the explosion. He stares at the ground until the janitor kicks him out.

It was his dad that named him, or that was what Granny told him before she died when he was eight. Natasha is pretty sure that's a justifiable reason for hatred. Being abandoned happens to lots of kids and wives, being a boy stuck with a girl's name is far worse. His mom barely seems to notice his rather unfortunate plight. She doesn't really use his name, anyway.

"Boy! Bring me s'more wine, wouldya?" she asks. She's not drunk enough to be mean, yet.

Natasha obeys, carefully navigating the mess of empty bottles and dirty laundry that is their living room. On the mantelpiece, his father's face looks down on him. He's long since memorised every detail of the photograph; the blond hair, just like Natasha's, the slightly crooked smile, and the yellow teeth.

"Your pa was a smoker," his mom would say when she got into her nostalgic moods. "Not into the booze, but he was a real smoker. I used to tell him, I told him that he better quit that, or his boy would be a smoker too. I wonder if that's why he left. You look just like him, boy, y'know that?"

Natasha had wondered once, if she had started drinking after he left or before. It didn't seem to matter all that much, but it was one more thing he could maybe blame on the asshole. He'd taken off when his son was three. It was Natasha's thirteenth birthday, that day, and he hadn't heard a word from him since. They lived in a small town, and people whispered when they thought he couldn't hear—

"Another woman?"

"I heard he went back to Russia…"

"…always was too smart for this town, and that woman of his."

"Shame about the kid, though."

"Where's my fucking wine, you useless shit?"

He snaps out of it, and yells out a meek response. "Coming, Mom!"

One day, he's going to find him, and get even. Until then, he'll live with it.

The night before his first day at the new school, Natasha dyes his hair red. He looks into the mirror, and practices his most non-threatening smile. The bathroom of their new apartment is clean like the house never was, and he's going to keep it that way. Even if his mom doesn't stick to her new promise to stay sober, he'll keep their four room apartment clean.

"You can call me Nat," he tells the mirror. "I'm Nat Romanoff. Nice to meet you. Yeah, I just moved here!"

He walks out of the bathroom, hair still damp and smelling of dye, to see his mother's mutilated body, and a man slipping out the window.

It takes him months to track the man down. All he remembers is black hair, a star tattooed on his forehead, and a crooked nose. He trains ceaselessly, stays on the move in case the police decide to take notice of the new street kid and throw him into the foster care system. He's never short of opportunities to practice as he develops his fighting skills. There's always someone who wants his meager possessions or the patch of hard concrete he's found to sleep on. He doesn't need a name, out here. No one uses names, just stupid aliases that keep their old lives in the past where they belong.

Natasha refuses to take on a title. One night, though, when he's been staying in a town for a few weeks, a man tries to rape him. With more speed than he knew he possessed, he grabs the guy's knife and buries it in his chest. After that, the other kids start calling him Black Widow. They say it with respect, and give him a wide berth. It works as well as any other, he supposes, so he takes it to the next town with him.

The man who murdered his mother is his second kill, one accomplished in the dark of the night a month later. He sneaks up behind him, and smashes him in the head with a hammer. Then he stabs him for good measure. It isn't as satisfying as he thought it would be. He's learned that his name was Darren Johnson, and he was a gang-affiliated drug dealer. It's not hard to guess why he went after his mother. They had moved because she owed a lot of people money for booze; heroin, he supposed, was just one step up.

He ends up in Russia with the ridiculous notion he might find his father. Along the way, he kills three more people, and loses his virginity to a ship's captain who offers him a ride if he lets him fuck him. It's a good deal, really. The second night of the voyage, they're lying in bed. The man has a heavy Russian accent. He never asked Natasha's name.

"Have you ever seen this man?" Natasha asks. He pulls the photograph out of the small bag of things he's managed to keep. The frame was broken a long time ago, and the picture is crinkled, but it's still recognisable.

The man squints at it. "No."

"He's Russian," Natasha presses. "Abram Romanoff."

"There are many people in Russia, boy. It is a big place." He manages a condescending tone despite his obvious difficulty with the English words.

Natasha lets the subject drop. "Will you teach me Russian? I'll blow you," he offers. The sheets on this bed are soft, softer than any he's ever slept on before.

By the time they dock, he has a basic grasp of the language, and an even better grasp of the art of oral sex. It serves him well, providing a steady flow of cash. He starts going by Nat, and by his fifteenth birthday he actually does know ten ways to kill someone without breaking a sweat. It's a few days later when the government tracks him down. They have a proposition for him. He has no reason to turn it down.

After that, his life blurs into a series of missions and aliases and assassinations.

"Clint Barton."

"Nat."

"What's that short for?"

"Don't you worry your pretty little head about it."

"You speak excellent English."

"And you're remarkably attractive."

He isn't surprised when he looks up to find Clint aiming a revolver at him.

"What, SHIELD doesn't let you use your bow?" he asks, as sardonic as he can manage. He's grateful that it's Clint who's going to kill him, at least, someone he knows and perhaps cares about, if only slightly. Clint knows him, a little, knows what he sounds like when he's fucking, and how he always kills child abusers a little more slowly.

"Nat," Clint says coldly. "Or should I say Natasha?"

He raises his arms, not in surrender but in invitation.

The revolver lowers, slowly but steadily. "I'd like to make you an offer."

SHIELD is cold and hard and everything Natasha is. He fills out dozens of forms, and goes through dozens of handlers. He starts sleeping with Clint again, more for the companionship than anything else. He kills people, but usually people who have actually done something wrong. He meets Coulson, who's a little soft for a handler but who actually refuses to fuck him because it would be 'taking advantage'. When Clint tells him their pseudo-relationship is over, a faraway look in his eyes and a slight smile on his lips, he knows exactly why.

He doesn't even bother threatening Coulson. The man knows what happens to people who piss off Natasha Romanoff.

When he's assigned to Anthony 'Toni' Stark, he almost wants to laugh. She's brusque, crude, and almost as much of an alcoholic as his mother was. She's the first woman he's ever wanted to have sex with. Unfortunately, she's a lesbian.

He's going by his real name, because Fury thinks it will give them some kind of camaraderie. He turns out to be right, which is absolutely infuriating.

"So, how'd you get stuck with it?" is the first thing Toni asks. "It was my dad. He was planning for a boy, and he'd be damned if my vagina got in the way."

It's something about the distant look in her eyes that makes Natasha tell the truth. "I don't know why. It was my dad, but he took off when I was a toddler. If I ever find him, I'll ask him before I kill him." He's aware a second too late that his tone may have been slightly too serious.

Toni just laughs. "Pepper, I like this one. Don't go falling in love with him, now."

And—oh. Natasha's in the clear. Toni's voice is just as serious as hers was. Well, he can do one good thing for this woman, at least. Clearly, all that Pepper Potts needs is someone to explain to her just how much Toni loves her.

The Avengers is crazy. He doesn't know how he got caught up in it, and he doesn't know when he became a member, and he doesn't know when he ended up living in the tower with the rest of them. But somehow, he wouldn't have it any other way. He tells them to call him Nat, but that barely lasts for a day between Clint and Toni. He doesn't really care. Occasionally, he retaliates with a particularly acidic "Anthony". Toni always flushes angrily.

About a year after the events that brought them together, they get a call about a mad scientist who's made an army of mechanical monkeys that are currently ravaging Manhattan. As it turns out, Abram Romanoff never returned to Russia after abandoning his wife and child. Instead, he got a PhD and did a lot of research on primates. He also went a little insane, but it's not exactly surprising considering how his son turned out.

Natasha doesn't have to call dibs. They all understand that the man is his to do with as he pleases. They may be good guys, but they'll turn a blind eye to a dead body, because that's what you do for your friends.

The rest of the team is wrangling monkeys when Natasha corners him.

"Hey Dad," he greets.

The man looks at him blankly for several moments before recognition lights up his face. "Natasha!" He obviously doesn't recognize him; he couldn't, not after so many years. But he knows, has maybe been thinking about the child he left behind.

"Yeah, I wanted to ask you about that, actually. Before I killed you. Why Natasha?"

Abram looks frightened, but determined. They're on a roof, of course—isn't that where these kinds of things always happen? Natasha doesn't like heights, much, not that he'd ever admit it. Especially not around Clint.

"Son… I knew that things were gonna be rough, without me. With your mother the way she is, and people the way they are. You needed to be tough. I knew that giving you a girl's name would make you tough."

Natasha pauses for a moment to laugh. It's the most ridiculous thing he's ever heard. Then he punches the bastard in the face, over and over until he can't see the family resemblance at all.

The first woman Natasha ever has sex with ends up being Maria Hill. She's a fierce, no-nonsense kind of person, which he can appreciate. It ends up being not really his thing, but they part with no hard feelings. Steve is the only one of the Avengers who notices the whole thing, mostly because he walks in on them kissing good-bye.

"I thought you and Clint…" he says, lost, a few days later.

Natasha hadn't realised anyone knew about that. He shrugs. "Sometimes you need to try something for yourself before you know it's not for you." He watches Steve's expression carefully.

He licks his lips almost unconsciously, eyes flicking towards the ground. Jackpot.

Natasha pulls Steve into a bruising kiss.

On his thirtieth birthday, Natasha visits his father in prison. He kisses Steve good-bye before he leaves. He doesn't even notice the guards snickering when he tells them his name.


End file.
